22. December 2025
director's column
Year’s End and a New Beginning – Here’s to a Great Museum Year 2026!
by Barbara Staudinger
As the days grow shorter and seem to merge with the long, dark nights, we feel that the year is drawing to a close – and with it comes the hope for a new year that will bring a little light into the darkness. The team at the Jewish Museum Vienna shares this anticipation and has prepared a diverse, exciting, and thought-provoking program for 2026, inviting dialogue, self-reflection, and a fresh perspective on both the familiar and the unknown. As a small gift at the end of the year, I would like to give you a personal sneak preview of what’s to come:
In January, the next exhibition opens at the Museum Judenplatz: “Alles vergessen” (All Forgotten) explores, from a cultural studies perspective, the often overlooked other side of memory: forgetting. Through selected objects and artworks, the exhibition spans the spectrum from individual to collective forgetting, from intentional suppression to erasure, and from things lost to attempts to rescue them from oblivion. From the Jewish commandment to forget to Austrian practices of forgetting after 1945, the exhibition tells many stories – and raises the question of how society deals with forgetting and the forgotten.
At the Museum Dorotheergasse, our autumn-opening exhibition “Black Jews, White Jews? On Skin Color and Prejudices” runs until the end of April. I highly recommend it, as it offers a nuanced view of how Jews have been classified within racial hierarchies in the past and present, while also celebrating Jewish diversity and showcasing a wide range of Jewish self-perceptions. Although we all have a skin color, much more often it is about the color others assign to us – or we assign to ourselves – along with the supposed traits that come with it.
In May, we will present a major new exhibition at Dorotheergasse featuring Israeli artist Eran Shakine, who has been exploring the three Abrahamic religions in an extensive series of paintings for years. Titled “A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew …”, each piece starts like a joke but, upon closer inspection, offers finely tuned humor and philosophical depth. A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew – portrayed as triplets – experience the ordinary and the extraordinary, the divisive and the connecting, and in each painting, they arrive at a small or great insight that makes us laugh, moves us, or prompts reflection.
“How much home does a person need?” asks Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry in one of his unforgettable essays, reflecting on his time in Belgian exile before his arrest and deportation. Exile means the loss of home – which encompasses far more than a physical place. For Améry, it includes language, gestures, orientation, friends, family, and much more. It is a fall out of any familiar framework, a state of solitude in the world. Our new autumn exhibition at Judenplatz will address these dimensions of lost home through the stories of Viennese Jews who were forced into exile, tracing their experiences from institutionalized expulsion in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to the often impossible attempt to return.
Rounding out our 2026 exhibition program in November is the acclaimed exhibition “The Orientals. Jewish Researchers and Adventurers in Search of Themselves in the Foreign” from the Jewish Museum Hohenems. Adapted and expanded for the Jewish Museum Vienna, the exhibition explores the fascination that the Orient, Islam, and Islamic studies held for Jewish scientists, adventurers, and writers in the 19th century. At a time when anti-Jewish sentiments and modern antisemitism were on the rise, Jews sought to find themselves through scientific, spiritual, and cultural engagement with the Arab-influenced Orient. The exhibition traces these currents, with a focus on their Jewish, often Viennese protagonists and their sometimes adventurous life stories.
Beyond our main exhibitions, we have plenty more planned. The Project Space in the Dorotheergasse Atrium will feature installations and small-scale exhibitions, exploring topics from a Viennese Jew’s hiding place to the story of a harp case from the New York Philharmonic. Our museum window displays will also highlight current issues, including the 200th anniversary of the Vienna Stadttempel, which will be ceremonially reopened after renovations in autumn.
This anniversary will naturally accompany our educational and events program, which promises to be especially diverse in 2026. In connection with “A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew”, we will introduce a new format that will engage visitors in a particularly hands-on way – stay tuned!
Even though the past few years have been challenging for the Jewish Museum, in 2026 and beyond, we stand for an open, liberal, and diverse urban society. We want to bring people together rather than drive them apart. We stand for open dialogue, for nuance instead of oversimplification, and for social cohesion rather than division. We know this path is not always easy, but we also know it is the right one. A museum that opens itself to everyone and engages with the public needs institutional allies – which is why 2026 will also be a year of many collaborations. We are especially grateful to our FRIENDS – support us and become a member!
Many of you may have read in the media that the Jewish Museum Vienna has been exempted from the significant cuts affecting the cultural sector. This decision not only reflects the city’s recognition of the societal importance of conveying Jewish history and culture, but also signals that our voice must not be silenced at a time when antisemitism has become a real and existential threat. We take this responsibility very seriously, I promise you.
I very much look forward to welcoming you during the period known as the “time between the years”, or in the fresh and hopeful year of 2026 at the Jewish Museum Vienna. Allow yourself to be surprised, intrigued, and inspired – and discover how seeing the city’s history and major social issues from a different perspective can change the way we view the past and present.
With warm wishes for peaceful holidays and a joyful New Year – see you soon at the Jewish Museum Vienna!
Barbara Staudinger
In January, the next exhibition opens at the Museum Judenplatz: “Alles vergessen” (All Forgotten) explores, from a cultural studies perspective, the often overlooked other side of memory: forgetting. Through selected objects and artworks, the exhibition spans the spectrum from individual to collective forgetting, from intentional suppression to erasure, and from things lost to attempts to rescue them from oblivion. From the Jewish commandment to forget to Austrian practices of forgetting after 1945, the exhibition tells many stories – and raises the question of how society deals with forgetting and the forgotten.
At the Museum Dorotheergasse, our autumn-opening exhibition “Black Jews, White Jews? On Skin Color and Prejudices” runs until the end of April. I highly recommend it, as it offers a nuanced view of how Jews have been classified within racial hierarchies in the past and present, while also celebrating Jewish diversity and showcasing a wide range of Jewish self-perceptions. Although we all have a skin color, much more often it is about the color others assign to us – or we assign to ourselves – along with the supposed traits that come with it.
In May, we will present a major new exhibition at Dorotheergasse featuring Israeli artist Eran Shakine, who has been exploring the three Abrahamic religions in an extensive series of paintings for years. Titled “A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew …”, each piece starts like a joke but, upon closer inspection, offers finely tuned humor and philosophical depth. A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew – portrayed as triplets – experience the ordinary and the extraordinary, the divisive and the connecting, and in each painting, they arrive at a small or great insight that makes us laugh, moves us, or prompts reflection.
“How much home does a person need?” asks Auschwitz survivor Jean Améry in one of his unforgettable essays, reflecting on his time in Belgian exile before his arrest and deportation. Exile means the loss of home – which encompasses far more than a physical place. For Améry, it includes language, gestures, orientation, friends, family, and much more. It is a fall out of any familiar framework, a state of solitude in the world. Our new autumn exhibition at Judenplatz will address these dimensions of lost home through the stories of Viennese Jews who were forced into exile, tracing their experiences from institutionalized expulsion in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to the often impossible attempt to return.
Rounding out our 2026 exhibition program in November is the acclaimed exhibition “The Orientals. Jewish Researchers and Adventurers in Search of Themselves in the Foreign” from the Jewish Museum Hohenems. Adapted and expanded for the Jewish Museum Vienna, the exhibition explores the fascination that the Orient, Islam, and Islamic studies held for Jewish scientists, adventurers, and writers in the 19th century. At a time when anti-Jewish sentiments and modern antisemitism were on the rise, Jews sought to find themselves through scientific, spiritual, and cultural engagement with the Arab-influenced Orient. The exhibition traces these currents, with a focus on their Jewish, often Viennese protagonists and their sometimes adventurous life stories.
Beyond our main exhibitions, we have plenty more planned. The Project Space in the Dorotheergasse Atrium will feature installations and small-scale exhibitions, exploring topics from a Viennese Jew’s hiding place to the story of a harp case from the New York Philharmonic. Our museum window displays will also highlight current issues, including the 200th anniversary of the Vienna Stadttempel, which will be ceremonially reopened after renovations in autumn.
This anniversary will naturally accompany our educational and events program, which promises to be especially diverse in 2026. In connection with “A Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew”, we will introduce a new format that will engage visitors in a particularly hands-on way – stay tuned!
Even though the past few years have been challenging for the Jewish Museum, in 2026 and beyond, we stand for an open, liberal, and diverse urban society. We want to bring people together rather than drive them apart. We stand for open dialogue, for nuance instead of oversimplification, and for social cohesion rather than division. We know this path is not always easy, but we also know it is the right one. A museum that opens itself to everyone and engages with the public needs institutional allies – which is why 2026 will also be a year of many collaborations. We are especially grateful to our FRIENDS – support us and become a member!
Many of you may have read in the media that the Jewish Museum Vienna has been exempted from the significant cuts affecting the cultural sector. This decision not only reflects the city’s recognition of the societal importance of conveying Jewish history and culture, but also signals that our voice must not be silenced at a time when antisemitism has become a real and existential threat. We take this responsibility very seriously, I promise you.
I very much look forward to welcoming you during the period known as the “time between the years”, or in the fresh and hopeful year of 2026 at the Jewish Museum Vienna. Allow yourself to be surprised, intrigued, and inspired – and discover how seeing the city’s history and major social issues from a different perspective can change the way we view the past and present.
With warm wishes for peaceful holidays and a joyful New Year – see you soon at the Jewish Museum Vienna!
Barbara Staudinger